


Bull's Eye

by TerresDeBrume



Series: The one where Alec & Magnus are cis women [2]
Category: Mortal Instruments Series - Cassandra Clare
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Canon Queer Character, Canon Rewrite, Character Study, Cisgirl Alec, Fights, Gen, POV Female Character, Siblings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-12
Updated: 2014-06-12
Packaged: 2018-02-04 09:22:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1773994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TerresDeBrume/pseuds/TerresDeBrume
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alec needs to talk to Clary, but nothing goes quite as planned.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bull's Eye

**Author's Note:**

  * For [particlenumber13](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=particlenumber13).



> So the other night, particle reblogged an all-female fancast for TMI and mentionned it would be interesting to see the confrontation scene in COB (the one where they argues about Jace and Clary makes it clear she knows Alec is gay) with cisgirl!Alec.
> 
> This is my take on that prompt :)

“You should probably leave,” Alec says after a moment’s hesitation. “Go home. Somewhere safe.”

 

The girl’s eyes are wide and very green, framed with eyelashes as red as her hair and enough freckles to make anyone trying to count them dizzy. She’s skinny and short, and she has the survival skills of a poodle, at best. Maybe she could become a decent fighter if she were trained, but Alec can tell she doesn’t have the skin to resist…well. Anything that comes around the training, really. Too honest. Too open.

Izzy’s wrong. She wouldn’t last a day.

 

“My home was destroyed by demons,” Clary replies. “And these—these—things….”

“The Forsaken?”

“Yes.”

 

Alec frowns. Forsaken were people, once. Maybe some of them were good people, maybe they had families. What happens when they get turned into things and no one can properly mourn them? Do Mundanes even notice they’re gone?

Judging from Clary’s attitude, Alec doesn’t think so.

 

“Forsaken don’t come back once they’ve been called off, and the portal below your house was closed. You’ll be as safe as possible now.”

“I can’t live on my own!”

 

This time, Alec blinks.

 

“We do it all the time. It’s not that hard to balance a budget.”

 

Alec has been taking care of her own money since she was twelve, and she’s been doing decently since then. It’s a good training to have in case she ever needs to pay for things on her own.

 

“Well it is for me,” Clary snaps –Alec feels her frown deepen. This isn’t going the way she wanted it to. “I can’t be on my own –I’m only sixteen! It’s not like I have a family I can go to!”

“Your Mundane can house you,” Alec points out, crossing her arms on her chest. She hates the way her voice rises when she adds: “You nearly got my brother killed saving his life –doesn’t he owe you that, at least?”

“First of all, Simon’s not  _my_  Mundane—”

“Tell that to his enamored doe eyes.”

“And secondly,” Clary plows on, steadfastly ignoring any hint at her friend’s feelings, “I didn’t do anything to Jace! Going to the hotel was his idea!”

 

That one is just too much.

Alec has learned, through time and numerous sessions of her anger falling onto deaf ears, to tolerate recklessness and borderline suicidal behaviors -there’s just no changing some people, and it’s not her place to tell Jace what to do anyway, she knows it. But _he_ is a Shadowhunter the likes of which the world hasn’t seen in too long a time.

 _He_ is the kind of person they need on a battlefield, not a selfish, whiny midget with as much strength as a bunch of angry kitten –why is it Clary can’t get that?

 

“You Mundanes are so self-centered,” she sighs at last, a knot rising in her throat, “You really don’t care about whatever I can say, do you? No matter how many times I tell you you’re a liability, you’ll just shrug it off and keep going, aren’t you?”

 

Alec can feel the telltale burn of sobs at the back of her throat, the sting of tears at the corner of her eyes, and she swallows hard, grits her teeth together and tightens her fingers into fists. All of this is Clary’s fault anyway –none of that would have happened if she’d just minded her own business!

 

“It’s you job!” Clary all but shouts -Alec hears Isabelle’s voice stop in the infirmary… Jace must have fallen asleep, or he would already be here and taking his new pet’s side. “Isn’t it? Killing demons and saving people?”

“That wasn’t the same!” Alec shouts back, stepping into Clary’s personal space until she’s forced to back up against the wall, “Don’t you get it? This wasn’t the same at all!”

“Why,” Clary hisses though pressed-white lips, “why was it different? Because he saved someone you don’t like?”

“Because I wasn’t there!”

 

Now Alec really is screaming, and the angry tears are threatening to spill on her cheeks –she sounds like the hysterical harpies her mother warned her about and she hates it, wishes she could just erase this part of her forever –what’s the point in training for a better control of yourself if it doesn’t even allow you to keep your wits about you when you’re in an argument?

Isabelle knows how to do that –Jace can’t, has never been able to stay rational in a fight, but that’s what Alec is _for_. Thinking on her feet and watching out for blind spots has always been her role, what happens when she can’t even do that?

Clary’s face changes, going from angry to confused, and Alec shoves her against the wall, hard. She won’t take pity from a little girl who wouldn’t last five minutes in a fight.

 

“I should have been there,” she insists, hissing through the mist of her anger, “That’s my job, alright? Making sure Jace doesn’t die while he saves the world, that’s what I’m here for because hunters as brilliant as he is just don’t do that on their own, and making sure he survives is my job—I can’t keep him alive if he starts going off on suicide runs just so he can impress a selfish brat with pretty eyes!”

 

Alec has one job in her life, just the one, and that’s keeping her siblings alive. That’s what back up hunters are for –you send the grunts watch the champions’ asses to make sure they don’t can it too early. Alec has been doing it for years, for Jace and Isabelle, and she’s been doing it fine –fine enough that Isabelle asked her to be her parabatai! She’s good at that job, if nothing else, and she’s not going to let a selfish brat put it all in jeopardy just because a near death experience is her idea of a romantic date!

 

“Oh my God,” Clary whispers after a silence, filled only with the sound of Alec’s harsh breathing, “Oh my god, you love him!”

 

The effect is instantaneous and disturbingly intense.

Alec’s eyes stop burning just as her shoulders unknot, arms falling at her side -she can feel the holes in her sleeves where they cover her knuckles- and her mouth goes slack, her eyebrows knitting together. _What the hell?_

 

“I…thought that was obvious?”

 

But Clary doesn’t let go of her shocked expression. One of her hands comes up to cover her mouth while the other almost reaches for Alec’s face -she dodges it- and her mouth slowly turns from a surprised ‘O’ to a pitying one.

 

“Look,” Clary sighs, shaking her head, “I’m sorry this is happening to you. I’ve had unrequited crushes before and—”

“What?”

 

Alec doesn’t even try to stop the laughter bubbling out of her throat when she realizes what Clary is trying to say, and she racks her fingers through her hair with a disbelieving chuckle, tugging on the short, uneven ends of it. What is it with people and assuming she’s in love with Jace anyway? Just because she’s supposed to be straight….

 

“I can’t believe it,” She grunts at last. “I can’t freaking believe that of _all_ the ways you could have interpreted what I just said, you chose the stupidest, most ridiculous excuse you could find—No!” She snaps before Clary can speak, her voice rising again, “Do you seriously think I’d be that ridiculous? Even supposing that I really was in love with Jace –which I’m not, by the way, because he’s my little brother- do you really believe his liking you would bother me _more_ than him running into a nest full of vampires with only a stupid _Mundane_ as backup?”

“Well at least the stupid Mundane isn’t afraid to kill a Demon,” Clary retorts, face flushing brighter than her hair, “Which is better than you can say!”

 

Alec has been slapped in the face before.

She can say, with utmost certainty, that this feels much, much worse.

 

“Who told you that?”

“Jace.”

“No.” That’s a lie. It has to be a lie. “He’d never say that.”

“But he did,” Clary insists, rubbing salt into the wound.

 

Alec can feel how pale she is -she’s ready to bet all the brown bled out of her skin, replaced by that ashy tint she gets whenever she’s sick or shocked –or, more shameful than anything else, any time she sees a spider.

 

“Jace went into that hotel without you and he came out fine,” Clary says at last, something not unlike triumph passing across her features –almost as if she felt satisfied for leaving Alec so obviously wounded. “So maybe I’m not that big of a stepdown.”

 

Alec’s vision fills with red, bright hot cloud of rage blinding her for a brief moment –just long enough that, when it dissipates, she’s holding Clary by the collar of her shirt, an arm on her throat and their faces so close they’re almost touching.

 

“Don’t you ever, ever think you could do what I do, not even for one second, you hear me?” This time it’s fear Alec sees on Clary’s face, fear, and a swift moment of ‘oh shit’ realization, and Alec isn’t ashamed to find it satisfying. “I’ve seen things you wouldn't even dare dream about, and I’ve been in situations that would make you piss your pants.” She presses Clary’s neck just hard enough to hurt, and hisses throught gritted teeth: “You wouldn’t last five minutes in my shoes, so shut the hell up, Mundane, and get lost!”

 

Swiftly, still shivering with rage, Alec lets go of Clary with enough momentum to send her reeling into the wall again, and then strides back into the infirmary. Jace is asleep, as she suspected, and so is the Mundane.

Without a glance for Isabelle’s worried frown, Alec strides to the instruments cabinet, seizes a scalpel from one of the drawers, and throws it at the door with as much force as she can manage.

 

 

It hits the thin rune serving as a peephole smack in the middle, but it’s still not enough to make her stop trembling.


End file.
